Great attention has been paid to conductive organic polymers since the discovery that polyacetylene exerts high electrical conductivity due to electron conduction when it is oxidized or reduced in the presence of electron accepting or donative materials to induce charge transfer reaction. Typical examples of such organic polymers are polyacetylenes, polyphenylenes, polypyrroles, polyanilines and polythiophenes.
These organic polymers, however, are difficult to shape due to insolubility and infusibility. Since a film of such polymer is formed by a gas phase or electrolytic polymerization process, the shape of the film is restricted by the shape of the reactor or electrode. The polymers can be seriously deteriorated by oxidation or reduction. These problems prohibit the practical utilization of the conductive polymers.
Polysilanes are very interesting polymers because of their metallic nature and electron delocalization on silicons as compared with carbon, high heat resistance, flexibility, and good thin film formability although none of them are highly conductive. There are known only a few examples of conductive polysilane which are obtained by oxidizing a polysilane having an amino group in a side chain with iodine or oxidizing it with ferric chloride vapor. The use of such corrosive oxidizing agents restrains the conductive polysilane from finding use as electronic materials.